


5 times beanie loved kitty, and 1 time kitty loved her too

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Kitty has always fancied boys, but it was never a problem for Beanie until a small, niggling thought started appearing every time that she declared Beanie better than the boy that she was courting at the time.Then why don’t you date me?A 5+1 fic.
Relationships: Katherine "Kitty" Freebody/Rebecca "Beanie" Martineau
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14





	1. 1. Hugo.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TisBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TisBee/gifts).



Kitty was in a bitter and horrid mood when she stormed up the stairs to our Deepdean dormitory, a letter in hand and tears running her mascara all down her face. “Hugo is a CHEATER!” she shrieked, throwing her bag and the letter at the headboard of her bed and herself down after it.

I heard something crack when she threw her bag. “He… cheated?” I asked, trying to be careful. Everyone in our dorm is dreadfully funny about romance. I think it’s obvious that Daisy fancies Amina, because they give each other gooey looks and Amina looked at Daisy all the time when she was asking them to come to Egypt. Kitty told me that I was being silly and Lavinia didn’t seem to care, but Hazel gave me a special and secret look and I knew that I was right. It is also obvious that Hazel is in love with her friend Alexander, but we all know that. It is less obvious that he likes her back, but he does. Daisy says so, and she is never really wrong. Lavinia pretends not to care about romance but I think that she does: she definitely wants  _ somebody _ , though I suppose she doesn’t have to want to kiss them.

Kitty is funny about romance too. Lavinia asked me what I meant by that when I told her, only I wasn’t sure and so I couldn’t explain it.

“I don’t know what I mean, only… Kitty is odd about romance. Otherwise I wouldn’t feel odd about  _ her _ !” I told Lavinia, and she gave me a very Daisy-ish look. The ‘I know things that you don’t’ look.

I thought about asking Kitty but something told me that was a silly idea, so I decided to figure it out myself. The feeling went away a bit after Kitty said that Hugo was a cheater, which didn’t make sense because, if I feel bad for her, it should have become worse.

Romance is funny and I’m not sure if I like it.

Kitty didn’t answer my question, instead furiously staring up at the ceiling and wiping her eyes. “How did you find out?” I asked her, and she huffed a laugh that wasn’t happy at all.

“The other girl. She… found out that Hugo was carrying on with both of us, and she… told me.”

There were tears in her voice and I hurled from my bed and onto hers, and gave her a big hug. She wrapped her arms back around me and squished me tightly up against her, sniffling into my shoulder. “You’re much better than any boy, Beans.”

There was a small voice inside my head then, a tiny and scared whisper that sounded like me when I was even shyer than I am now.  _ Then why don’t you date me? _


	2. 2. James.

“Beanie, you know Kitty better than I do,” Daisy said, and I thought that she looked very strange with her dark wig and lots of rouge on her cheeks. “Is  _ this _ going to turn out as badly as I think it is?”

She was gesturing between Kitty and a boy that she was dancing with, and said the word ‘this’ as if it were a bomb. All of us were together at a dance, as it was the only way that we could all meet up with Daisy and Hazel technically on a mission for the government. They were casually surveying a young suspect who was also there, so I suppose they were doing work. Hazel was across the room with Alexander, dancing together beside where the suspect in question was talking to somebody, and I didn’t want to think about where Lavinia and George had wandered off to.

“Um…” I frowned. “I don’t know if Kitty likes him.”

Daisy pulled her ‘girls who like boys are peculiar’ face and gestured with one manicured nail to exactly how closely they were dancing. “Doesn’t that suggest it?”

I suddenly realised that I knew something that Daisy did not not. “That’s not  _ liking  _ him! Look at Hazel and Alexander, it’s so obvious that they like each other, and care a lot. Kitty just… thinks he’s pretty and wants to kiss him because she wants to kiss boys.”

“That makes sense, Beanie,” Daisy said in a way that surprised me, and she smiled. “So you could put any boy there and she’d be acting the same?”

“Kitty thinks that she needs a boyfriend,” I blurted, feeling very rude for doing so. “I mean—”

With an odd look on her face, Daisy said, “I know what you mean. She thinks that she needs a boyfriend in order to be worth anything at all.”

I nodded and we shared a look of sympathy. “Do you like that Hazel and Alexander are together?” I asked, for she had often seemed sour at the idea even before they became a couple.

“Yes, I do.” She looked across the room at them, his hand on her waist and her gaze on his smile, both paying rapt attention to the suspect and each other. “Hazel ought to be happy, and Alexander is annoyingly perfect for her. I used to be jealous, I thought that he was taking her away from me, but our friendship is not any different now that both of us are dating people.”

I thought that her brush with death and all of her spy missions had made Daisy a little more Hazel-ish, and Hazel a little more Daisy-ish, and I decided that I liked it very much. “Then… why can’t I be happy for Kitty when she’s dancing with a boy?”

Daisy gave me that look, the one that Lavinia had given me when I said that I felt so odd about Kitty and how she is about boys. “Oh,  _ Beanie _ .”

Kitty came flouncing over at that moment, looking as if she was walking on air. “Oh, don’t boys make you feel  _ alive _ ?”

Daisy gave her another ‘girls who like boys are peculiar’ look and said, “They certainly remind me that I am living, yes.”

“His name is James,” Kitty said, words coming out between dreamy sighs. “Don’t you think he’s  _ handsome _ ?”

I felt Daisy look at me, pulling a funny face of disagreement over Kitty’s shoulder. “I’m glad, Kitty. Don’t spend all your time writing to him, though!”

She laughed and flung her arms around me happily. “Don’t be silly, Beans, you’re better than any boy.”

The thought appeared again, humming inside my mind and making my heart flutter inside my chest in an uncomfortably way.  _ Then why don’t you date me? _


	3. 3. Oliver.

He was a boy from the village who was a bit older than us and served us in the Willow Tea Rooms, and Kitty was instantly in love, and talked about him all the way around all the shops. She whispered frantically about how handsome he was until my insides twisted up and felt strange and heavy, and I wanted to cover my ears to stop her talking about  _ boys _ .

Luckily, Lavinia came to my rescue by accident. A comment about George being way more attractive had them head-to-head in a debate about what the criteria for the ideal boyfriend truly is, and Amina rolled her eyes and turned to me as we walked to another part of the charity shop, inspecting some pretty tea cups. “Silly about boys, aren’t they?”

I nodded. “Hazel and Lavinia aren’t so bad. But Kitty…”

“She talks about boys exactly as much as Lavinia and Hazel do, you know. I know that Lavinia is a bit… different, but Kitty and Hazel go on about attractive boys with handsome jawlines the exact same amount,” she said, a kind look in her eyes and speaking softly, directing her words only to me. “Why does only  _ Kitty _ bother you so much? Are you jealous of her? You know, do you want the boys to look at  _ you _ instead?”

Something happened inside my head when Amina said the word ‘jealous’ and I was suddenly very short of breath when I turned to her, gasping out, “Amina, what does it feel like to fancy a girl?”

Amina was silent for a few seconds, but she got what I was trying to say. “Oh. Wow, I was wrong with my guess, wasn’t I?”

I nodded mutely, looking up at her until we both saw the funny side and started to laugh. “I don’t know what to do.”

Amina gave me a look and said, “We can talk back at school. It’s a bit of a… you know how people see it.”

“Yes, I know.” I picked up a little ceramic fox and held him up. “I shall buy him and name him Gerald.”

With an enormous, silly grin, Amina plucked a matching fox off of a higher shelf and held him out too. “This is Anubis, he’s Gerald’s brother.”

She smiled at me again and we both giggled, and agreed that it would be cruel to separate the poor ceramic foxes and that we really should keep them together.

When we emerged from the shop with two ceramic fox friends, Kitty and Lavinia were still arguing about boys in their strange joking way, until Kitty said, “That’s it! I’m going back to the shop and asking if he wants to write to me, and I will prove you right!”

I felt very soupy and unreal all of a sudden, like I was sinking into an invisible ocean. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry, Beanie,” Amina said, smiling at me sadly and squeezing my shoulder.

Lavinia rushed over and asked our opinion on their debate. Amina sternly told her that all boys suck, but all I could do was shrug and stroke the tiny ceramic fox in my hand, feeling sad and small and like I had swallowed an ice cube, all uncomfortably cold with my tears frozen up.

Amina gave me a determined nudge. “Me and Beanie found some friends.”

After some fumbling, I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and turned my head up, showing Lavinia the little ceramic fox. “Gerald.”

“And Anubis.”

With a baffled look, Lavinia said, “You’re both mad.” 

Kitty came skipping back a bit after that, just as we had persuaded Lavinia to stroke our pet foxes. “His name is  _ Oliver _ .”

“If you talk about him too much during our midnight feast, I’ll slap you,” Lavainia warned.

“I’ll talk about Beanie instead then,” she said, rolling her eyes and slinging her arms around me neck from behind, leaning her head on my shoulder. There was a piece of paper in my hands and I saw what had been written on it:  _ 23 Richmond Avenue, write soon -Oliver Parks ♡  _

Amina gave me a pitiful look as Kitty said, “Beans is much better than any handsome boy from a coffee shop. Though he’s still more attractive than George.”

I felt very sick and like not much at all when Kitty said that, and I thought,  _ Then why don’t you date me? _


	4. 4. Luis

“There’s a French boy flirting with Kitty at the salad bar.” Daisy sat down and swept her incredibly dramatic dress to the side to do so. For once, she was wearing her normal hair, but curled up in a beautiful way and underneath a lovely hat.

“Of course there is,” Lavinia said, as if Daisy had pointed out the rain outside the shop in which they were getting lunch. “Beanie, you’ve got that look on your face again. The same one you get when you’re staring all introspectively at the ceiling in the dorm.”

“You introspectively stare at things?” Daisy asked in a rush, staring at me owlishly. “I’m so proud of you, you’re turning into me.”

Hazel smiled at her and teased, “Just what we need, another one of you.”

“I am  _ wonderful _ ,” Daisy said, dramatically draping herself across Hazel’s lap. “You are all  _ blessed _ to be friends with me.”

“Of course we are,” Hazel kissed her cheek and then prodded her side with her fork.

Daisy jolted back to her seat. “You’re a beast, Hazel Wong,” she said, but I don’t think that she meant it. “So, Beanie, what has you pulling introspective faces at peeling paint?”

I took a bite of my sandwich and looked away. “I’m not being  _ introspective _ , I’m just thinking about me.”

“That’s what introspection is, Beanie,” Hazel explained kindly. “You’ve seemed upset recently, what’s wrong?”

I could tell that they had been rehearsing the conversation while I was in the ladies. I didn’t say anything. “There’s nothing wrong! And before you say anything, it’s  _ not _ about Mummy dying!”

Lavinia pulled a face and muttered, “Well, that’s us told.”

When nobody said anything else, I figured that I was safe. Just as I was relaxing and taking another sandwich, Hazel very suddenly said, “ _ Oh _ .”

As usual, her and Daisy exchanged their detective look and understood each other at once. “You love her, don’t you, Beanie?”

“...No.” Even though I lied with my words, I nodded miserably and sank down in my chair, my hair falling down over my eyes in a dark curtain that blocked out everything else. 

“Oh,  _ Beanie _ ,” Hazel exclaimed softly, and she pushed back her chair and rushed around the table to give me a hug.

“Are we rearranging the couples?” Kitty asked jovially, sitting down in the chair beside me with a happy sigh.

I jerked and hit Hazel underneath the jaw, but she pretended not to mind. “Rearranging… what?”

Lavinia chuckled. “Kitty is making a _ stupid j _ oke about reshuffling the couples in our group and putting you two together, hence that very awkward hug.”

“Ew.” I pulled a face at Hazel, who pulled a face at me, and we both laughed.

“No, I thought that Beanie looked like she needed a hug,” Hazel said, sitting back down beside Daisy and stealing a macaron from her plate. “If we were rearranging the couples of our group, I’ll take Lavinia.”

Pretending to be offended, Daisy gasped and said, “Why not  _ me _ , Watson?”

“Purely to annoy you,” Hazel replied, and it was Lavinia’s turn to make offended noises.

“I’d obviously pick Beans, if I absolutely had to pick someone in our group.” As she spoke, Kitty carelessly stole some food from my plate. “Though Luis — that beautiful French boy, who gave me an address to call at! — is close competition. But Beans is better than any boy.”

I screwed up my eyes and looked away, and I thought the question that I already knew the answer to.  _ Then why don’t you date me? _


	5. 5. Lawrie.

“I’m boooooooooored.”

I looked over at Binny. It was the summer holidays and I was spending part of them with the Freebodys, while Daddy went off on holiday to see Mummy’s sister and her husband and little children. Despite him wanting me to go, I said no.

When Kitty got another date with Lawrie, the bookish boy from the coffee shop, I started to regret it. She had said that she was going to come with us to the fair that had come to Belgravia, where they live, and so we were waiting for them to come back. Binny is not too bad but she is very annoying after approximately five minutes, and I was not used to being with her on my own without Kitty as a buffer.

I would never admit it, but I sort of saw what made Kitty want to annoy her. It was like a weird instinct to just shove her and make her shush.

“Beanie, I’m bored, pay attention to me!”

I frowned at her. “Go and annoy Tibbles.”

“You’re mean today.”

She was right. Kitty being off on a date with Lawrie made me feel inside out and horrid, purely because he was so lovely and nice. He remembered our names and orders at the coffee shop, and asked after Kitty’s parents, and gave her posies of flowers and told us both that we looked ever so pretty in our summer dresses. He wasn’t a cheater, like Hugo, nor did he move faster than Kitty was comfortable with, like James, nor did he say horrible things about girls, like Oliver, nor did he look at Kitty as if she was an object, like Luis.

Lawrie, with his wire-framed glasses and kind smiles and silly compliments, was perfect for Kitty.

“You’re such a sulk, Beanie!” Binny said, and sulked off up the stairs. I went back to the puzzle on the coffee table. It had two foxes on it, and Amina had got it for me for my birthday. We had decided that the fox on the left, the smaller one, was Gerald, and that the tall and grand one was Anubis. 

I was just finishing the middle of the puzzle (there were lots of orange pieces almost the exact same colour) when Kitty stormed through the front door, kicking off her shoes and throwing down her bag with a huff. 

She was not wearing the hat that Lawrie had given her. That was the first thing that I noticed.

“Beanie!” she cried when she saw me, and I rushed to my feet because Kitty was tearful and sad and upset and there was a horrible pull in my chest towards that feeling because it meant that Lawrie was likely over. 

I caught her in a big and tight hug. “What happened?” I asked. “Where’s your lovely hat?”

“I don’t want to see Lawrie ever again,” she mumbled into my hair. “I don’t want to see any boy ever again, Beans. Oh, why do they all turn out to be so _horrid_? What’s wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, silly,” I said, squishing her in my arms and feeling that horrid little bloom of heat in my chest that I wanted to pluck out of me as if it was a flower. “You’re just fine. The boys don’t know how good they have it and how lovely you are.”

She pulled back and wiped her eyes, and she seemed too sad to notice what I was doing and so I looked at her, properly _looked_. Despite the tears, she was very pretty indeed, bright hazel eyes and lovely brown hair, and her cheeks flushed with her lips slightly chapped from how she bites them in concentration when we bake together. However, she was usually so bright and happy and such a big and lovely personality, but she did not seem that way then, crying in the living room with everything about her dampened with sadness. It was as if Lawrie had stepped on her and made her feel like nothing at all.

Hiccuping a little, she explained in fits and starts. “He likes me _too much_ , Beans, that’s the problem.”

I tried not to look surprised, but I had never heard that complaint about a boy before. “What do you mean?”

She stared at me then, looking scarily desperate, and properly started crying, pressing her hands over her face and her shoulders shaking as she shook her head frantically. “I don’t want to _marry him_.”

“He… he asked…” I couldn’t remember the word, I never can. I knew what I meant but it was a picture inside my head without words, and it made me so frustrated that I tried to guess it again and again and again. “He asked you… he did the… oh, I can’t _remember_!”

Sniffing, Kitty smiled at me in a watery way. “Yes, Beans, he proposed. I don’t want to… I don’t want to marry him.”

“You shouldn’t have to! I can’t believe he asked that, how horrid of him!” Something occurred to me and I felt very much like a detective when I said, “Do you think he was trying to trap you?”

“Yes, probably.” With a sigh that sounded heavy, she accepted my handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “You’re so much better than any boy, Beans.”

I thought about it when she said that, the whole sorry lot of it, every horrible boy and every broken heart. I thought about how worthless and small Hugo had made her feel. I thought about how sick and invaded she had felt because of James, and how Oliver told her that she was a good girlfriend because she was pretty with no brains at all. I thought about how Luis had compared her to a painting and said horrid things about putting her in an art gallery, and how Lawrie wanted to trap her as his wife forever. 

And it simply was not fair. How could somebody as lovely and good and kind as Kitty have such horrible boys hurt her so many times?

I thought about it all until my head hurt, and one of my thoughts sprung out of me and I felt dreadfully brave when I asked, “Why don’t you date me, then?”


	6. +1. Beanie.

“My feet  _ hurt _ .”

I giggled at Kitty’s dramatics. “You told me to wear comfy shoes and didn’t do it yourself!”

“I wanted to look pretty for my girlfriend, sue me!”

I tried to give her Daisy’s ‘you’re being silly’ look. “I’d think that you’re pretty if you wore a suit and those elastic things, Kitty.”

“Suspenders, Beans,” she corrected absently, and came over to the mirror (after discarding her shoes in an excellent position to create a tripping hazard). She threw her arms around me from behind and kissed my cheek. “You look so lovely.”

“Thank you.” I felt myself go all blotchy, even though Kitty compliments me all the time. I am not very good at responding to compliments, not like girls in films, but Kitty doesn’t seem to mind. “You look pretty too.”

She chuckled and tucked a hand under my chin, leaning down a little bit to kiss me. “You’re so much better than any boy, Beans.”

Feeling daring and able to tease, I replied, “And that’s why you’re dating me!”

With a loud, boisterous laugh, she swept me up in her arms and kissed me again. 


End file.
